How's that one going to work? "Oh hey, my competitor just hired this guy whose skin is a bit too dark and who speaks with a funny accent. I know nothing else about him, but he must be an illegal, am I right?"

No I'm not assuming we're starting from zero. I'm assuming there are still poor Southern Americans who would benefit from coming to a place that decided they wouldn't deport large groups of illegal immigrants.

Yes, people will still want to come here, but deporting 1-2 million illegal immigrants is a lot different than deporting 11-12 million.

No, this hasn't literally already happened; as you explained, Reagan put all these people on a citizenship pathway; that's very different from what I'm suggesting.

Your policies essentially tell illegals: "If enough of us break the law and go to the U.S. they won't deport us. They'll just make us residents."

Assuming we're "starting from zero," so to speak (once the current illegals become Temporary Workers, or whatever your preferred term is), things could be more manageable.

They will self deport in a few years.

Or they will stay here and work and live in even more questionable circumstances or add to our homeless and/or prison populations.

By all means, let's enforce our laws, but I think you're being overly-optimistic with your self-deportation idea. These people came here because they were broke and couldn't find work in their countries. Now these laws are being strictly enforced and they're broke here without the money to self-deport. Say they scrap some money together, do you think they'll use it to self-deport, or to buy some food or clothes here, or maybe send it back home to their relatives?

Am I? I'm all for strengthening our borders to prevent further illegal immigration. But I'm also realistic enough to realize that we just cannot deport millions of people and the status quo of keeping these people in limbo and in the shadows of society is just not tenable.

By all means, tell me what you would do about our illegal immigration problem.

And a few decades later, giving them non-citizenship residency won't be enough. We'll have to give these illegals citizenship.

None of it has to do with race. I don't know why you keep going back to that.

I was offering you options to explain yourself since you weren't doing it yourself, and you finally have.

Ok, so the Democrats are proposing citizenship because of transparent political reasons and the Republicans are against it because of their strong moral fiber. You see nothing wrong in how you are characterizing the opposite party? This way of viewing the world is completely ok with you?

Is transparent politicking really the main reason Democrats have for their policy position? They are thinking "We will give these people the right to vote and they will then vote for us"? Remember, illegal immigrants can't actually vote, so the Democratic base has to go along with this plan for it to be a feasible party platform. Now, maybe the entire Democratic base is made up of transparent-politician types, or maybe there are other reasons why someone would support giving citizenship to illegals.

This is my entire point. Your "transparently political" gripe about the support for citizenship depends on Democratic voters being unscrupulous caricatures willing to sacrifice their morals for hypothetical future votes, and that's just a lazy and dishonest way to approach your political opposition. You should stop doing it if you want people on the other side of the aisle to take you seriously. If you're content to sit in an echo chamber, then by all means continue with your "buying votes" nonsense.

In my personal worldview, current (non-criminal) illegal immigrants should receive some sort of non-citizen-pathway legal status.

The reason I got into this whole conversation was not to defend blanket citizenship to illegals (which I don't actually support), but rather to address the first poster's whining about how "transparently political" it is to give citizenship to illegals.

If his main problem is the politics of it, then Republicans can do the same thing and the problem is solved.

If his main problem is not the politics, but rather a moral stance, then he should have the intellectual honesty to admit that the Democrats could also be taking a moral stance rather than a political one and stop spewing nonsense about "buying votes."

Anyways, please explain to me just why the naturalized illegals HAVE to be Democrats. I have been trying to get you to articulate this and all you keep saying is "buying votes" which is a catchy, yet meaningless phrase.

Do you think the new voters will be dependent on welfare, therefore they will vote for the Democrats who will provide said welfare? So you do subscribe to the lazy-immigrant stereotype.

Do you think the new voters are mostly minorities and minorities have to vote Democrat? This does not have to be the case--Republicans can and should have policies (and tone) that appeal to minorities.

Do you think the new voters will only vote for the party that gave them citizenship? Republicans can do the same thing, so this argument about the unfair "buying" of votes holds no water.

It's not that hard. Just explain yourself in actual meaningful specific language rather than meaningless generalities like "buying votes"--unless you literally mean Democrats are out there handing envelopes of cash on the border.

I don't think you understand the second point I was making. The hypothetical "failing" that Republicans are making is not that they support strong borders. The hypothetical failing is that there will be all these new voters and the Republicans are losing them to the Democrats because of their policies.

Based on your writing, I can guess that your response to my second point is something along the lines of: illegal immigrants are lazy; Democrats support the lazy; therefore, the new Americans will support the Democrats.

But is that really true? Where did the lazy illegal-immigrant stereotype come from? Because last I checked, illegal immigrants are hustling for work in restaurant kitchens, standing outside Home Depots looking for manual labor, or picking up fruits in farms. You know, stealing jobs from real Americans. Are they actually lazy, or are they hard workers? If they are hard workers, why can't they vote Republican?

What government coffers are being opened to non-American citizens? Please tell me how this works. Do you think Bob Immigrant crosses the Rio Grande one day, then goes to his local Obamacare office and says "I will take one welfare, please!" and the bleeding liberal says "yes, of course, right this way. Please remember to vote Democrat come November"?

So what you're saying is that the government should instead be massively increasing funding to public libraries and ensuring everyone has high-speed internet to access said educational content. I can get behind that.

Please elaborate on your last point. Do you think the new Americans will vote Democrat because 1) it is the Democrats who are mainly supporting legalization, so they will vote for them as a show of gratitude, or because 2) the new Americans are minorities who tend to vote Democrat?

If 1, then Republicans can just jump on board the legalization train and neutralize Democrats getting all the credit. If 2, tough shit--maybe Republicans should figure out how not to alienate minorities; there is absolutely no reason that minorities should, by definition, be Democrats; this is a failing entirely of the Republicans' own making.

What are your thoughts on people of other ethnicities using the word (Hispanics, South Asians, East Asians, etc.)? What about a mixed-race person? What if they're half black? A quarter? 1/8th? 1/16th? When does it stop being ok for them to use it? How about a black Hispanic who has never lived in the US? How about a black person adopted by an Asian Family?

However, in my experience very few professors teach law in the sense that the author of the article talks about. Picking a hard case where consent is very ambiguous, or the victim has a controversial history

That's exactly what the article is about. Teaching is being diluted because of cultural sensitivities.